


Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

by ObliObla



Series: Lucifer Songfics [5]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, F/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Singing, Songfic, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 11:57:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16892163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: It's been seven months since that whole mess with Cain, and here Chloe is, alone on Christmas Eve, with nobody left in the city she wants to talk to. Not even the errant partner she's been avoiding.Especially not him.





	Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
> Let your heart be light  
> Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
> 
> Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
> Make the yuletide gay  
> Next year all our troubles will be miles away
> 
> Once again as in olden days  
> Happy golden days of yore  
> Faithful friends who are dear to us  
> Will be near to us once more
> 
> Someday soon we all will be together  
> If the fates allow  
> Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow  
> So have yourself a merry little Christmas now  
> -Hugh Martin-

It was Dan’s year to have Trixie for Christmas.

His great aunt lived in NorCal, so they’d headed up on Saturday and were staying until the 26th. He had suggested Chloe come with them, but his grandmother was very Catholic and _very_ traditional. She hadn’t approved of the divorce and Chloe had no interest in having a big family dustup in front of her daughter. Her mom was supposed to be in L.A. for the holidays, but at the last minute… “Big part, honey. Huge. I can’t _not_ take it,” somewhere like South America. Or South Africa, maybe. Honestly, she’d stopped listening by then, far too used to that particular excuse to bother.

Even the girls weren’t an option. Ella was in Detroit visiting family, and Maze had dragged Linda off to Vegas. She’d offered to let Chloe come along, but it was clear they needed to work some stuff out—not to mention the fact that Maze was… She shook her head roughly. Anyway, she didn’t want to get in their way. So here she was, alone on Christmas Eve, with nobody left in the city she wanted to talk to. Not even…

No. Not going there.

She choked back another gulp of eggnog, spiked with something Maze had hidden under the sink. The TV was playing something bland quietly in the background as she hit her phone’s messaging app. She knew it wasn’t exactly mentally _healthy_ to dig through old texts—especially since this was hardly the first time she’d done it—but when she was a little drunk and too stuck on the past like she was right now, it was hard not to. Their conversation had been open since he’d first gotten a phone; she scrolled through it, only pausing briefly at the stretches of blue where he hadn’t responded. Any time anything remotely _serious_ happened, Lucifer would withdraw and she’d send him message after message to no avail.

But not this time. She reached the end of the texts. There were several from that day, coordinating their movements. Their messaging had grown more infrequent as her relationship with Mar…Pier… _Cain_ had progressed, but the in-jokes and devil emojis had never completely dried up.

There was only one text from after that day. One of his, three days later. No jokes, no emojis—none of his usual extreme glee—just a too short message:

_I’m sorry_

She hadn’t been quite mad enough to leave him on read, but she hadn’t responded. She _couldn’t_. What even was there to say? The suspicion she’d held from the start—that they were just too different to work out—had been more than validated. There was possibly no one in the world more different.

_In the world_ —she snorted a little hysterically, putting her glass down and wiping at her face. She’d mostly been dealing with all of this the traditional Decker way: shoving it all so far down she couldn’t feel it anymore. But—and maybe it was the alcohol, or just the fact that she was alone on Christmas—it wasn’t working, and her weak laughter turned into quiet sobs.

_Damn_ him. She told herself she wasn’t going to cry over him again. After all, it wasn’t like she hadn’t heard anything about him for seven months. She was friends with his therapist and his best friend and… Hell, they really did have basically the same social circle, didn’t they? Damn it. She was doing it again. Crying and thinking about him like some pathetic, heartbroken girl while he certainly wasn’t thinking about her at all, was probably up in his Penthouse with one of his…

Her phone buzzed.

_Merry Christmas, Detective_

She blinked slowly, deliberately, but the message was still there. Seven months and… _Detective_?  She almost threw the phone to the other side of the couch, but then the little dots appeared that indicated he was typing. She held her breath for a moment, then released it, agitated with herself again. She wasn’t this easy. She was not this easy. She was _not_ this…

_Chloe_

A beat and then…

Her fingers were moving before she could tell them to stop.

_Will you come over?_

She bit her lip hard, staring at the screen. The little dots appeared again.

_Are you sure?_

She could see the disbelief that must paint his face; the same doubt that appeared whenever she told him that she cared about him. _Was_ she sure? No, but… wasn’t she allowed to miss him? Even if she _was_ mad at him. Even if they _were_ too different. Even if she was _sure_ it wasn’t going to work out. He was still her partner, wasn’t he? She took a deep breath, fingers too tight around the phone.

_Yeah_

She thought about trying to clean herself up a little before he showed up, but she’d barely managed to make it to her feet when there was a soft knock on the door. She freaked out for half a second before she remembered. Angel, _right_. She still double-checked the peephole before wrenching the door open. He looked exactly as he had the last time she saw him. Well, the second to last time. The _last_ time, he’d been…

She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t a perfectly ironed suit, well-polished shoes… he was even wearing eyeliner. Besides the slightly windswept hair—which was _maybe_ a little longer than she was used to—he looked far too put together, especially when _she_ was in sweatpants and a ratty old t-shirt with her eyes red from…

“ _Chloe…_ ”

He sounded disheveled in all the ways he looked composed. She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him over the threshold before she could think too hard about it. She settled them both on the couch and turned to watch him. She hadn’t _really_ expected him to look different, but it hit her then that 7 months or 7 years or 70… he would still look the same. She shook her head to dispel these thoughts. He was here _now_. He was _here_.

He was staring at his hands, clasped loosely in his lap, twisting his ring around his finger the way he did when he was nervous. The dark stone seemed to almost shimmer as he caressed it with his thumb.

“Where did you get your ring from?” she asked quietly, but he jumped like she’d shouted, blinking over at her in confusion.

“You want to talk about… my ring?”

“I…” She sputtered, unbalanced by the strangeness of their distance, caught on opposite sides of her couch. No casual hand on her knee, no warm line of his leg against hers. “If you don’t want—”

“I made it,” he said, frowning down at the stone. “I took one of my stars and… condensed it.” His voice was trying to convey nonchalance, but his expression was still far too serious. “It was… the most beautiful thing I had ever made, shining brighter than all its brethren, and I wanted…” He shook his head. “I _wanted_.”

And suddenly, she needed to be there for him the way she used to. She steeled herself, reaching over timidly, brushing her fingers against his knuckles. For a moment, she thought he might run, but instead, he turned his hand over and tightened his fingers around hers.

“After I fe…” He sighed. “The light fled from its heart. I kept it because… I don’t know, I suppose I wanted a reminder of what happens when I try to fulfill my true desires.”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, unable to stand more of this stilted silence. “I shouldn’t have ignored you. I shouldn’t have—”

“I think we’ve both done more than our share of ignoring, darling,” he said, scrubbing his free hand over his face. “And _I’m_ the one who ought to apologize. I… I never should have kept any of this from you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” She’d told herself she wasn’t going to cry over him, let alone in front of him, but then the dam burst and, as the tears fell again, she threw herself onto him, burying her face in red silk. She flashed back, briefly, to the last time she’d thrown herself at him, drunk and desperate, and he’d pushed her away. But she only felt his hand splay against her back—however hesitantly—his fingers sliding up her spine, carefully cradling her head.

“I thought you were afraid of me,” he said eventually, gently combing through her hair.

She pulled back to look him in the eye. “Never.” She pressed their foreheads together. “I couldn’t _ever_.” His brow furrowed for a second before he blew out a relieved breath, nodding. She settled herself more comfortably on his lap and her gaze caught on… whatever it was that had been playing on TV—Judy Garland, wearing a sparkling gown, was talking to a little girl. “What movie is this?” she asked, unsure of what else to say.

He looked over at the screen, a strange expression on his face. “ _Meet Me in St. Louis_ ,” he said softly. Then he closed his eyes, nearly smiling, and started to sing along with the TV.

“Have yourself a merry little Christmas…”

She wondered where he’d learned this song—it could hardly be less like what he normally sang—but she didn’t want to interrupt, to break him from this moment. He didn’t sing like he normally did. Not forceful. No edge. He didn’t smirk at, “make the yuletide gay,” and when he sang of, “faithful friends,” he seemed almost pained. But he clearly knew it well despite, or maybe because it was so different from his usual preference, matching the vibrato, meeting each line more delicately than she’d thought him capable of. She entwined their fingers together, and that was when she saw it.

It wasn’t shining quite like he’d described, but the edges of the stone were glimmering. Faintly, perhaps, but steadily and, as she watched, the light spread, swirling at the center, gleaming like a whole galaxy of stars. His fingers tightened around hers as his eyes snapped open, the ring’s luster reflected in their depths. “I don’t understand,” he whispered, gazing at it with something like awe.

“It was a reminder,” she murmured, laying their hands together in her lap, “that you couldn’t have what you wanted, what you truly desired.” She met his gaze. “That _we_ couldn’t.”

“But we _can’t_ …” He bit his lip, looking unbearably young and… _lost_. “Can we?”

She leaned forward and kissed the corner of his mouth; she was so close she could hear the little gasp that escaped him. “I’m willing to try if you are?”

And this time, against her lips, he truly did smile, fully, if a little wistfully.

“I want nothing more.”

**Author's Note:**

> Through the years we all will be together  
> If the fates allow  
> Hang a shining star upon the highest bough  
> And have yourself a merry little Christmas now


End file.
